Above : Picture of Saint Columbanus (Right)

Amongst the most illustrious of its pupils were St. Columbanus, St. Gall, and Dungal the Astronomer, and the great St. Malachy pre­sided over it in the twelfth century. The School of Clonmacnoise was founded by St. Ciaran in 544, and took rank as one of the greatest centres of ‘earning in Europe. Alcuin, the foremost and most representative man of letters of his time, was a pupil there, and we have still a letter in which he records his gratitude to one of his masters at Clonmacnoise, and sends a gift from the Emperor Charlemagne to the professors. The oldest of our Irish annals was written at Clonmacnoise by Tighernach, and Suibhue, another of its teachers, who is referred to in the Saxon Chronicle as the greatest master of the Scots, assisted King Allied ^,t the foundation of the University of Oxford. St. Brendan founded the School of Clonfert in the year 556, and presided over it for twenty years, during which time he is said to have trained three thousand monks. The School of Lismore was founded by St. Carthach in the year 635. St. Cathaldus of Tarentum was a professor in Lis­more and had under his care students from Eng­land, Gaul, and Germany. There were also celebrated schools at Aran, Durrow, Clonenagh, Cork, Derry, Emly, Glendalough, Innisfallen, Iniscaltra, Louth, Kells, Mayo, Mungret, Ross, and Tuam.

In all the greater schools of Ireland there were students from foreign lands, who were attracted by the celebrity of the Irish teachers, and the phrase ‘ Amandatus est ad disciplinan in Hibernia’ came to be the mark of a learned man on the Continent. Bede tells us that in 664 many of the nobility and the lower ranks of the British nation forsook their native land and went to Ireland, either for the sake of sacred study or of devoting themselves to a monastic life. Some of these became monks, while others chose rather to apply themselves to study, going about from one master’s cell to another. The Irish willingly received them all, and took care to supply them with daily food without cost, and also to furnish them with books for their study and teaching free of charge.*

Ad helm, Bishop of Sherborne, writing forty years later to his friend Eadfrid, Bishop of Lindisfarne, who had himself been a student at one of the Irish schools, states that the English went to Ireland in crowds as numerous as bees, and asks, ” why does Ireland pride herself upon a sort of priority, in that such numbers flock there from England, as if here (i.e. in England) upon this fruitful soil there were not an abundance of Argive or Roman masters to be found, fully capable of solving the deepest problems of religion, and satisfying the most ambitious of pupils.”

Below : Saint Gall Statue